Cactus

This morning I woke to find that once again my 25 year old cactus has burst into flower. Not that it was totally unexpected because during the past week, two large stalks have rocketed forth from it, ready to bloom into quite enormous flowers, which sadly only last a few days at most. The stems of the flowers are about 20 centimetres and the diameter of the flowers some 10 centimetres, really enormous. Quite how this miracle of nature always flowers at either the new or full moon I don't know. I took these photo's a year or two ago, sometimes there are just two flowers, sometimes as many as five. But in any event a true miracle of nature, reminding us that things are not always what they seem, and that from the apparently mundane something extraordinary can occur beyond human power.